Scott Hotchkiss (wears a hat just like
a stone-cold killer would wear)

Fred Hotchkiss (something about this
guy just ain't right)

Dave Haas (wanted in three states for
assault by belching)

Dan Thomas (referred to by the inner
circle as El Bizarro)

Dave Rockwell (related to the notorious
Hotchkiss Gang; kills with his camera)

And, appearing offstage in the role of
the Ghost of Claudius, Mark Haden, mysterious mastermind and possible
supercriminal Cosa Nostra fixer type.

The cabin of fantasy, five hundred miles north of anything, accessed by floatplane only.

It was a fine Thursday afternoon. We
were gathered out on the dock; and we had gotten quickly into the
beer. There was a high-powered speedboat tethered in the locked
boathouse, with the rear end showing, and very soon Fred had Tarzaned
into the boathouse underwater, a long Bowie knife in his teeth
(figuratively speaking) and ascertained that the boat had the key in
it and would start. This prompted a terrible temptation and madness
in some of the company, but not all. Calls were made to Haden –
increasingly incoherent and profane calls, but Haden wisely would not
touch these proposals even with an infinitely long theoretical pole,
and no illicit powerboating ensued. We subsided into the inaudible
muttering of Inuit tribesmen chewing blubber, and more beer was
transported across the long gangplank, built on a set of bolted steel
rails stolen from a train yard a century ago. Clouds drifted by, and
an Hispanic stonemason tapped interminably on stones in the
waterfront just to our east. Each tap eroded, ever so slightly, the
plaster bust of our sanity. However, I think the primitive harmonies
of lake, cottage, campfire and freedom shored up that crumbling
sanity a little more than it was eroded and we came out of the
weekend restored, at least enough to carry on.

Fred rests from his labors.

Every man carries within him the
trapped personalities of himself in previous stages of life, so they
say, and I believe. There is a toddler, and a boy, and a teenager,
and a young adult, all sitting back in there twiddling their thumbs
while the mature adult goes about his boring, unavoidable routine,
just waiting for death (according to the younger personalities). And
for any reasonable level of happiness, those earlier selves need to
be let out and indulged to some degree. So naturally this trip is a
yearly escape from the cage just for the teenager and the young,
unmarried adult: most rules relaxed or eliminated; personal hygiene
strictly optional; self-discipline in food or drink waived; and the
time available completely unscripted, with only the cohesion of a
small gang of adolescents with no clear leader. Once again the
female world is returned to its former status, when we didn't
understand it as we do now, and the mystery was intoxicating. I made
a toast around the campfire: Here's to our wives, God bless 'em, and
to them not being here.

A rare moment of Porch Nirvana.

I was able to do some lengthy kayaking, and view a full spectrum of cottages from palatial to post-rustic; here are a few examples of interesting craftsmanship:

Beautiful stone work, possibly unmortared.

Railing just made for collapsing under dozens of Western movie bad guys dropping into the calm waters.

A fugitive from the last Ice Age, hiding in plain sight, like Whitey Bolger.

And there are plenty of forgotten docks to be found which are clearly deathtraps, unfit to be walked on by anything bigger than a cat:

We did have a general goal to do some
golfing together, but in a style and manner completely lacking in
seriousness and rigor; hence as balls disappeared forever in the
Adirondack backwoods on either side of the fairways, we would curse
just for the fun of it, and get another ball. In three carts we
hustled along and kept ahead of the real golfers in their foursomes.
This was not the kind of course where you get escorted off for
wearing the wrong plus-fours – if such courses even exist anymore.
Mark was the one real golfer, and Danny showed good skills, but the
rest of us had to be content with the rare good shot which was
occasionally better for that spot. And for the kid in us, that rare
shot is the whole beauty of the game, and the score is just a
nuisance to be ignored. For the average golfer, this attitude is
necessary to prevent the famous golf-induced frustration that will
always set in, because if the score is all you crave, there are
always a huge number of players whose game you will never even
approach. Golf need not be “a good walk, spoiled.” But it
forces you to get your mind right, if you want any satisfaction at
all. A drive that lands somewhere near the fairway and a solid
six-foot putt once in a while are all I need to be happy.

Canada Lake is a fairly large,
oddly-shaped lake surrounded by hills and mixed forest, with fine
clear water and houses new and old scattered along much, but not all,
of the shore. The surrounding forest is a dense mixture of hardwoods,
pine and hemlock. Our cottage, rented very reasonably in the
off-season, is charmingly and genuinely rustic and run-down, but
still quite functional. It lends itself to the gothic imagination:
painted dark brown, with every floorboard creaking, and the whole
engulfed in hemlock, one could easily sink into a Lovecraftian dream
and imagine a race of misshapen humanoid squirrels living in the dank
crawl space with the more decrepit boats. Hemlocks and other small
trees have even been allowed to nearly obscure the view of the lake.
But the kitchen is excellently equipped with the needful: coffee
maker, modern stove, quality utensils and fine large chef knives
handy for slashing at zombies and the like.

Notice the matched pair of eight-point bucks guarding the parlor.

There is also a large,
sagging boathouse with a completely renovated bedroom suite upstairs
(not rented by us on this occasion), and two kayaks, a canoe and an
ancient Sunfish sailboat, identical to those in which we as children
played pirates and perhaps learned the first basic requirements of
sailing on Quaker Lake, a half-century ago.

The cottage of real life - a few broken windows and a million creaking boards. Oozes charm, as the agents say.

Unfortunately the sail on this Sunfish
is completely worn out, just waiting for the next good squall to tear
it to ribbons. The last foot for so at the end of the boom is torn,
so that the trailing edge of the sail flaps free, and in several
other spots small holes have worn through. Hence on Saturday when
the wind picked up nicely during my morning kayaking trip, and Fred
and I decided to go out sailing, the poor old boat could just barely
meet the challenge. We managed to broach it right at the dock while
hoisting the sail, which is also a clue to our level of incompetence,
but soon we were scudding – maybe a better term is trudging –
downwind, with me as captain by default, as Fred had last sailed the
Sunfish about 40 years ago.

We rounded the tiny rocky island (use
caution, real possibility of hitting the centerboard on a submerged
boulder here) a half-mile west in a few minutes and started to tack
back up the lake, and soon discovered that our upwind travel with the
terrible sail and the overloaded boat was going to be a real
struggle. Not far upwind of the island a sudden shifty gust caused
an unplanned tack, and our scrambling about caused water to pour in
over the side, and we were swamped, and drifting helplessly toward a
rocky lee shore, that much-beloved phrase so common in stories of
maritime adventure.

Tiny dock on the tiny island.

Luckily a Sunfish can be quickly bailed out, and
we clawed our way back up the lake as the wind faded, shifted and
gusted in that enchanting manner which makes small-lake sailing so
maddening. There was much recrimination and blame cast as Kirk
blamed Spock for being drunk and disorderly, and Spock blamed Kirk
for being paranoid and incompetent, but eventually the tiny ship
warped into port safely, and beer was drunk.

Cooking was rudimentary, only slightly
more advanced than typical Neolithic or Neanderthal cuisine,
especially as the gas grill supplied was almost as craptastic as the
Sunfish sail, and had to be lighted with a long burning twig from the
campfire. Steaks and hot Italian sausages cooked in the dark kept us
alive and drinking. I am a breakfast aficionado, though, so on
Friday morning we had cheese omelets, bacon and toast with our
coffee. On Saturday morning it was Jimmy Dean sausage and toaster
waffles, etc.

Do not take this boat out unless you are a world-class small boatman and have insurance.

Central to the flow of time was the
firepit, flanked by ancient wooden benches, surrounded by hemlock,
near the kayak/canoe launch ramp. We kept the fire going the first
two days, using available moldy logs and fallen sticks, and also by
the slightly questionable but traditional method of scrounging moldy
old logs than might technically belong to an adjacent property. The
last night firewood was purchased and brought in, and used liberally,
though we could still sit on the benches without broiling. Each
morning we rebuilt the fire from embers.

Rustic detail.

The fire helps the time
flow harmoniously, and the mind is freed to remember the summers of
long ago, and the tongue freed to tell the tales that we could not
forget if we tried. Some of them, anyway. And Saturday night we got
out Fred's drum, and Mark's didgeridoo, and Haas's hilarious little
wheeeee! device, and made some interesting noises to accompany a wild
variety of classic tunes from Haas's playlist. My boyhood dream of
becoming a world-famous didgeridoo virtuoso and Tuvan throat singer
was shattered, though, as apparently I just don't have the right sort
of floobly horse-farting lips for it, and I don't have the knack of
inhaling and exhaling simultaneously, either. Oh well! Fortunately
there was no recording made of this session, as far as anyone knows.

Duke, duke duke, Duke of Earl, duke, duke...

I drove out early Sunday with Scott,
as he needed to meet his wife in Canajoharie (Indian name, translates
as “The Jar that Washes Itself” – apparently a reference to
some pothole feature worn into the granite of a nearby streambed). I
dropped him at the Betty Beaver gas station – a name that is
self-explanatory, once you see the impressive bas-relief logo. This
just begs for a syrupy country western song in the antique style:

She said she'd meet me

At the Betty Beaver

And I swore I'd never

Even try to leave her;

In Canajoharie

That crazy old town

The skies are starry

And the beer's not bad.

Let us pray that the new management doesn't dare to change the Beaver!

Our early departure apparently was
highly fortuitous, allowing us to avoid seeing Tarzan without his
breechclout wading out to secure the Sunfish sail before checking
out. With any luck there exists no photo of this, if such a thing is
still possible in this horribly virtualized world we have created.

Mennonite country in upstate New York; almost a green version of Montana.

Thursday, October 16, 2014

We spent the last week of August in
Paris, just as tourists, celebrating life milestones. I quickly
noticed that cycling in Paris is nothing like cycling in American
cities. A case could be made for it being the premier large cycling
city in the Western Hemisphere. This is not an in-depth study,
though. Herewith a set of photos as tentative evidence:

Art bike:

A standard step-through city-use bike
that is nearly always plain black; but someone went to a lot of
trouble to give it a brilliant, unique Jackson Pollock-style paint
job. And it gets regular use, as I found it gone some days. Maybe
it was on loan to the Pompidou.

The Classic:

I include this shot of an ordinary
vintage bike just for sentimental reasons; I rode a nearly identical
bike for many years in the 80s and 90s, down to the chromed fork, top
bar cable clips and center-pull brakes, and I hated having to change.
(I did have a better seat post.) I forget what happened to it.
Probably stolen. Nice to see someone keeping this thing going
indefinitely.

Boulevard de Magenta Bike Lanes:

I was so amazed at seeing the Blvd. de
Magenta for the first time that I was almost run down by a
fast-moving young Parisian on a bike. You will note (if you are a
cyclist) that there is a long, straight, well-marked, unobstructed,
separate bike lane on each side of the boulevard which is protected
on both sides by trees. There is a buffer zone on both sides of the
lanes where the trees are planted. Cars stay on the roads, bikes
stay on the lanes, pedestrians stay on the wide sidewalks next to the
cafés. This was not installed last week; it has the solidity of
time behind it. There is the occasional bench in the buffer zone,
and bike racks on most blocks.

It's almost as if – dare I propose
something so outré – as if the French consider cycling to
be a normal adult activity on a par with any other, and cyclists to
be ordinary human beings rather than depraved thrill-seeking
children!

I'd dearly love to see a comparable
photograph of any street in any major U.S. city. Anyone?

Bikeshare in Paris:

Named Vélib', it is ubiquitous,
heavily used, and ridiculously cheap, considering that the first half
hour trip is free, and there's no limit on the number of trips per
day. A person could quickly become familiar with the locations of
the stations and work it to be completely free after paying the
yearly fee of 29 Euros. This would be a huge savings over any other
form of transportation besides walking. There are other rate
options, such as the one-week rental of 8 Euros, making sense for
able-bodied tourists. According to the Wiki, in 2011 the system
averaged almost 86,000 trips per day. The
bikes are grey, either bland and soulless or tastefully chic, your
choice, and I witnessed a wide variety of people using them, in all
kinds of attire, almost never with helmets. This system was
initiated in 2007. I would have thought that it would be closely
studied and imitated by every city worldwide when planning their own
bikeshare systems; but that would be painfully logical. To blazes
with you, Mr. Spock, you pointy-eared pedant! We'll go to hell our
own way, thanks.

The Bullitt
Clockwork:

A bakfiets with
disc brakes and a Fifties-style modern art cocktail lounge.

Delivery Trike:

Give a man a
brand-new, heavy-duty machine, maybe with one of those
electric-assist front wheels, and what's the first thing he does with
it? That's correct: he makes bets on how big a thing he can move
with it. In this case it appears that the limit has been reached.
Merde!

Derelict:

I saw rather few
abandoned bikes compared to the average American city; of those, most
had been heavily scavenged. So this stood out as an oddity: a
typical step-in town bike, sitting there long enough for the tires to
go flat and the pigeons to coat it with guano, and yet it is still
fully equipped. Alternatively, it might be an art installation. This
is Paris we're talking about. Art lurks everywhere, like young love,
ready to ambush you and play you for a fool.

The “Fastlife”
Fixie:

Elegant, sleek,
stylish, yet inexplicably crowned with a torn up ruin of a seat.
Minor disguise to discourage theft? Victim of sabotage? Something
to do with protesting the evils of globalization? Or a police search for contraband cigarettes electroniques?

The White Foldie:

Notice the
integral welded rack and the seat with the springs, which the owner
locks to the frame.

In close cahoots,
an inexpensive ordinary, a bakfiets with dwarvish coffin, and a
velocipede apparently custom built for a member of some other
species. Yeti? Wookie? Steve Buscemi? I regret I could not wait for
this trio to emerge from their café.

The Insouciant:

Raffish,
devil-may care, competent, and with a plywood platform (plate-forme
de contreplaqué) securely mounted
between the inverted bars. One imagines an impeccably Mohawked young
savage briskly striding out of the bookstore with a volume of Marxist
romantic poetry stuck in his jeans, clipping into his Looks and
warping out into traffic as if piloting an X-wing fighter.

Poorly named, but
with many interesting features: the braking rod below the handlebars,
the integral rear-wheel lock, the full chain guard, the heavy duty
mudguard, the fancy rear light, the heavy-duty rack, and the frame
pump. Stolid, totally reliable, lasts forever. Maybe owned by a
German?

The “Sparta
Pickup”:

Alright, wipe that
smirk off your faces, wiseguys. This is the bike that that original
Marathon runner – Pheidippides, I think his name was – would have
died for if he hadn't died from running so hard. Note the super-duty
front rack, the extra-heavy-duty chromed seat springs, the doubled
top bar, the fully enclosed chain and the industrial-strength
bifurcated kickstand. If you're going for practicality, dammit, go
all the way. None of this plywood crap. Spartans – We brake for
nobody.

The “Kolkhoff”
- For Madmen Only

Okay,
let's take the mystique of the Practical Black Bicycle one
fucking step too far! Take your
time as you scan this magnificent machine. Your eye is irresistibly
drawn to the sex toy in the center, on which the cyclist sits and
pilots his Mystery Ship. A passenger sits in the back, his feet on
the bars (check your shoelaces!), wearing a little black bowler and
reading his newspaper; a charmante mademoiselle perches
elfinly (there is so such a word) on the seat welded to the front
bar, her feet on the bars bolted to the fork and her silk scarf
waving gaily in the breeze. It would be nice if she'd tear open her
blouse and start waving a huge tricolor, but let's not go nuts.
We're trying to get to work and deliver a gross of perfect croissants
in the big plastic crate in front before the expresso passes its
peak. And when we arrive, we will have a choice between the sturdy
bifurcated kickstand or the standard kickstand – unless the latter
is actually some kind of antenna that continually reports back to the
Central Scrutinizer somewhere deep under Paris.

Velotaxi at Work:

Velotaxis are
common wherever tourists might be found; they go fearlessly into
traffic. They come in such varied design that I don't think I saw
two alike. A fine thing I'm sure, but I wouldn't ride in one on a
bet.

Velotaxi waiting
for a fare:

I
have no explanation for this. Perhaps the guy just got this job last
week. Maybe he's filling in for his cousin. Maybe the round thing
behind him is a grill full of sausages. That would get my business.
But the colors! Sacre Bleu! (I
picked up lots of French in a week. It's an piss-easy language.) Unfortunately this was typical
of the place: filled with outstanding works of art, gorgeous women
dressed in impeccable taste, and all kinds of monuments of great
charm and dignity, and, with dismal regularity, things that are
exactly the opposite. Ugly graffiti, ridiculous clothing on people
other than tourists, establishments selling le cigarette
electronique under the moniker
Le Crapoteur. Truth.
Will supply proof in my essay in preparation entitled Paris Street
Scenes.

The Yellow
Delivery:

Another very
heavy-duty practical bike with impressive racks, but at least it's
not black. Two big locks. We did not meet any of the legendary
suave and debonair Parisian thieves, but I'm sure they still ply
their trade with alacrity and diligence.

The Little Local Velovia:

Bakfiets for sale! I didn't actually see any of these orange wheelbarrows in use anywhere. All the ones I saw looked both more functional and more elegant. But somebody must be buying them. Pilgrims from Portland?

To Sum Up:

Ah,
Paris. Elegant, oblivious women everywhere; small dogs lifting their
legs over the bizarre shoes of store-window mannequins. Interesting
bicycles on every block. And should you feel for some reason
deprived of the refreshing sight of beautiful naked breasts (les
beaux seins nus), simply raise
your eyes and scan the majestic buildings for statues, and soon
you'll find relief. Just don't stumble into a busy bike lane as you
are gawking thusly; it would be terribly gauche.

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About Me

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.